Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sometimes they hear us on the other side of the House. Mr. Speaker, there was a concerted message from this side of the House that we needed to do something in the Northwest Territories about early childhood development. They heard us. They developed a plan within the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, but in doing so they have missed the mark and I’m going to tell you why.
Mr. Speaker, they have decided to implement Junior Kindergarten in communities where the ramifications and the fallout from it is actually going to have the opposite effect from what is desired. In communities like Hay River, we have long-standing institutions like the Hay River Cooperative Play School, the Head Start program on the Hay River Reserve, we have Treehouse, we have Growing Together and we have the French preschool. We also have some very good licenced day homes and child care services as well.
Early childhood development in the regional centres – and let me just speak for Hay River – was being very effectively addressed, but when the government comes along with their solution to the problem, there is no target. The targeted area, because they wanted to see better educational outcomes than what we have, should have been those communities, small communities mostly, who had nothing in their community for early childhood development. That’s where it should have been, but in their, I don’t know, enthusiasm to address this issue, to address the fallout of early childhood development, the fallout is actually going to be quite substantial.
Mr. Bouchard and I have met with the Hay River DEA. To add another class to our existing education system without any funding is going to erode the entire educational system from K to 12. It’s going to take away from that because we say we are going to have better outcomes by starting those little four-year-olds in Junior Kindergarten. I have a five-year-old granddaughter; Mr. Bouchard has a little guy who’s five years old; and I can tell you that those little gaffers come home from school, all-day kindergarten – we used to only have half-day kindergarten; now we have all-day kindergarten – and those little guys come home from school that they both just started and I tell you they are dead tired on their feet. Now we’re going to put little four-year-olds in all-day kindergarten.
I would like the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, before the rollout in the larger communities in the regional centres, to rethink what they are doing by putting this load onto the DEAs and DECs without additional funding for the education system. I think it will be catastrophic. I think it will be devastating. You are going to gut the services that are already there, and please, please think this through. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my statement is on Junior Kindergarten, much like my colleague Mrs. Groenewegen. Many people in the small communities, and in the larger communities, as well, feel that this government has rushed in to implement the Junior Kindergarten initiative without first reviewing the pilot projects that happened last year in the small communities. To make things worse, the student/teacher ratio was also changed just last year from 8 to 1 to now 16 to 1. We also have a number of challenges with lack of resources and funding. This year all that was given to the schools to implement this was $15,000, and if you didn’t implement it this year, next year you won’t get anything. There is also a shortage of staff.
In Fort McPherson, for example, we have 14 junior kindergarten and 14 kindergarten students. Can you imagine taking on 28 small children in one classroom without any assistants?
There are also concerns of training in the field of early childhood development. Kindergarten teachers are not required to have early childhood development training.
I’ll have questions for the Minister later today.
